Indianapolis Times, Volume 43, Number 178, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 December 1931 — Page 27

DEC. 4, 1931.

Gems of Peril IIL 1 - *

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR > J. JUPITER was the first man v . on deck. Although It was past nis usual early retiring hour, he still Was dressed. He was there when Captain Hendricks came hurrying down from the bridge, and together the two men retired to the port rail. Bates and .Mary followed. "What’s the matter, captain?" Bates inquired somewhat nervously. He had a landsman’s inordinate fear of an accident on sea, and even Mary felt a childish impulse to rush to the captain and cling to his hand until the danger was over. “We're fast on a reef,” Captain Hendricks was explaining to Mr. Jupiter. ‘ Bhe’s apparently not hurt —the engineers say she’s making no water below—but she seems to be well stuck.” “Can you get off by yourself?” Mr. Jupiter asked. “Well have a try at it tomorrow morning. I’m afraid, though we’ll have to have a tug out of Key West to give us a pull.” “Do what you think best,” Mr. Jupiter answered mildly. it a a * “I shouldn't have come in tonight,” the captain continued, “but the moon made it almost like day, and I’ve been around here so much I thought I could make it even in a fog. “This channel isn’t used except for small fishing craft, and apparently some of the buoys have drifted over. Sec that mid-channel buoy there?” He pointed to what looked like an upturned funnel to Mary. It was floating almost in the shadow the ship cast on the water. “Mid-channel buoy, and it’s sticking right up on top of a reef with only about five feet of water over it! Fortunately we were coming in slow, lust barely turning over.” “Just where are we?” Bates asked. “Just a half mile from the old pier at Ft. Jefferson where I intended ta make fast. In another five minutes we’d have been there. That’s Dry Tortugas there a couple ’ of miles off the starboard beam.” They turned to look, and the ray of the big lamp swept across their faces and off into the moonlit night. “I’m going fishing in the morning, then,” Mr. Jupiter said cheerfully. “How about, Bates?” “Fine.” “We’d better be getting a little sleep. Ought to be out by 6 anyway. They bite better early in the j , morning. Everybody back to bed now. There’s nothing we can do to help, and we’d only be in the way.” tt tt tt THE day that followed was one of unutterable tedium for those left behind while the fishing party cruised happily about. Mary sat in a deck chair, a book In her lap, watching the unexciting labors of the distant fishermen through a telescope loaned her by the captain. It was not very entertaining, but it was better than nothing. The burning sun drove Bruce and Louise downstairs, where they played interminable games of solitaire. De Loma prowled the ship like a caged animal. He had run out of cigarets long since and his nerves were all a-jangle. He roved from one end of the ship to the other, leaning on the rail and studying the prospect in , every direction. They were all very much the same, which must have been discouraging. He avoided the landward side, Mary observed, but whether this was due to her presence there, or to the view—which consisted of glassy sea out o± which old Ft. Jefferson prison reared its ugly head—she did not know. Presently, to give him the range of the boat, and also because his restlessness had begun to get on her nerves, she resolved to go below and take a nap. She met a steward with a tray, headed for Dirk's stateroom, and stopped him. She rearranged it a bit to make it more inviting. Then she had the steward wait until she wrote a note. It was only three Words. Mary pulled a book from the rack on one side of the salon and sent that along, too. She promised herself that she would drop in and see Dirk after he had lunch. a tt a ONCE she heard an altercation out on deck. De Loma was berating a steward because he had locked up the liquor cabinet, at Mr. Jupiter’s order, as it turned out. Mary dismissed it from her mind, until a violet knocking at her door forced her to take notice of it. De Loma was in a towering, white-hot rage. “What’s this % all about?” he snarled. “Am Ia guest on this damn fishing-smack or am I not? Why can’t I get service from these deafmutes you’ve got for waiters on this tub? “I want a drink, and I want it now, do you hear! Tell this cub to toss out that key! What does he think I am, a baby?” “Take your troubles to Captain Hendricks. He’s in command,” Mary replied. “Yes? Well, there’s something else I want to know —why doesn’t that radio operator send my messages?” "Doesn’t he?” “No. If he did, I’d have had answers before now. What’s happening to my trunks? Damn it, if that hotel seizes them, I'll hold you responsible!” Mary smiled shakily. “You flatter me. As I said before, Captain Hendricks is the man to see.” ‘ “That !" From his choice of expletives, it was apparent that Captain Hendricks already had been seen, and added his refusal to that of his subordinates. De Loma was appealing to Mary as a last resort. He was almost beside himself, and his bravado was crumbling fast. Mary shut the door and an instant later she heard the captain’s low, steady voice: “We've a sick man in that cabin down there, De Loma. I suggest you lower your voice. Better still, stay up on deck. What were you bothering Miss Harkness about? Miss darkness is not to be annoyed!” an a DE LOMA obeyed without a word. There was something about the sturdy figure of the captain that was impressive particularly to a man whose courage was not of the physical sort. / Mary, listening to the encounter

between the two with a loudly beating heart, opened her door a tnfle when De Loma had gone. Captain Hendricks still was standing there. “Keep your door locked,” he said very low. “The steward just surprised him trying Mr. Jupiter’s door. That's what he’s so hot and bothered about. Though I reckon he’d like*to have a drink, at that. “Good thing Jupiter’s got the only boat—l think he’d try to row to shore.” “Are we off the reef yet?” she asked hopefully. All morning the crew had worked at the job of dislodging the stranded Gypsy, first dropping an anchor off the bow and trying to pull her forward with a winch and then repeating the performance off the stern. But the lovely white-and-gold yacht was seated firmly upon a rock, and there she remained, as alluring a sight as Circe of old to the tired and grubby fishermen now plying toward her. “No luck. We’re here till we can get a tug to pull us off.” The captain shok his head. “He’ll be balmy before then. You know what I think?” He whispered almost gleefully. “I think it’s that old prison that gets his goat! He’s so jittery now he can’t eat. And when appetites fail tn shipboard, a man’s either seasick or got the fear of hell-fire in him.” a a u IN mid-afternoon the fishermen arrived and even the sullen De Loma was at the rail to watch their coming aboard. Any kind of activity was better than the stillness and utter lack of human association from which he had been suffering. “Oh, what marvelous luck!” Mary called out involuntarily as the boat came alongside and she saw several shining fish in the bottom. “What are they? I never saw such beautiful fish before.” Both Mr. Jupiter and Bates were grinning as they climbed out, albeit rather stiffly, and came up the gangplank. x “Kingfish,” Bates replied, “and they’re rightly named, too. What a fight one of those fellows gave me! He knew I was an amateur, so he gave me the works.” “Didn’t you get any barracuda?” “No. No luck there.” Mr. Jupiter called a deck hand to bring their catch up from the dinghy. “I wouldn’t want to try to bring one of those into that cockleshell. Got the boat loose yet?” “Sorry, sir,” the captain replied. “And now there’s something the matter with the radio. Tried to get Key West to order a tug, but it wouldn’t work. Couldn’t raise anyone.” A sudden thought made him look suspiciously in De Loma’s direction. “If I though any one had tampered with it ” De Loma brought his eyes back from a moody contemplation of Ft. Jefferson prison, turned and walked away. The captain’s speculative gaze followed him. tt tt DIRK was either asleep or feigned it when Mary went down to see him. His stony unresponsiveness was beginning to wear her spirits down at last. It was not human, she felt, to be so stubbornly resistant even to the ordinary claims of friendship. He must hate her. There was no other explanation. She almost ran to her own cabin, locked herself in and let the tears come. Then, realizing that she could not go up on deck again without exciting curiosity, she sent a steward to ask Bates to loan her his half-complete “picture puzzle.” If she must be a prisoner, she could at least be doing something useful. For two hours she labored over the heap of paper scraps, fitting them together expertly, until she had the finished poster. It was almost impossible to gain a clear idea of the man’s looks until another hour’s labor had succeeded in pasting the scraps in place. But beyond a doubt it was De Loma—a younger De Loma, almost a boy, in fact. The same thin, hawk-like face, the beady black eyes, the arrogant head. He wore a white shirt open at the neck, and white trousers curiously clipped at the ankles, as if for bicycle riding, and what appeared to be a pair of old tennis shoes. The curiousness of this get-up was heightened by his pose—arms folded across the chest, the feet at right angles in the “first position” of the ballet dancer. Below was printed: “Harry Hill, the Human Fly.”' Mary pondered this for some time. The name was not familiar, and she had no idea what a “human fly” was. Leaving it for Bates’ interpretation, she went on deck. tt tt a NIGHT had settled down as she joined the rest of the party, grouped on the main deck just forward of Mr. Jupiter's cabin. A half mile or so to the east, gleaming ghostly clear in the moonlight, the prison rose abruptly out of the sea. A gold moon swam in the deep blue tropical sky. The whole scene was like a vivid lithograph or a highly colored postcard picture. Louise was talking as Mary joined the group, describing an old castle she had visited the year before. “It had the most marvelous stained glass windows, made in Italy by the monks during the Renaissance and transported over the mountains on donkeys. I remember particularly a deep crimson . . . the glass was so finely colored it looked like precious stone ...” She turned to Maiy. “What reminded me of it were your rubies. What have you done with them? Do you have them on the yacht? I should love just to look at them again.” “I have them here,” Mr. Jupiter spoke up, before Mary could decide what answer to make to this amazing request. He reached into the pocket of his dinner jacket and pulled them out, holding them up to the eyes of the others. There were several sharply drawn breaths at the unexpected glory of the stones. “Try ’em on, Mary, do,” he urged. “It’s a sight worth seeing,” he told the others with naive pride. He rose and laid them in her hands. Fumbling with nervousness, Mary reached up to fasten them about her neck, but they slipped from her finger*.

She made a frantic gTab for them, but only succeeded in striking them with her hand. They fell flashing into the sea. “You fool! Oh, you fool!” De Loma screamed at her insanely. “Now see what you’ve done!” CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE ■pvE LOMA pushed Mary roughly to one side and leaned over the rail, peering down into the clear water. The moon silvered it so that it was like a mirror to one looking down from above. Bates jumped almost as quickly as The Fly had and seized him by the arm. “What do you mean by speaking to Miss Harkness that way?” he demanded, shaking the other’s viselike grip loose from the rail. By a visible effort of will, De Loma got his emotions under control. He bowed stiffly from the waist to Mary. “My apologies,” he said. “I forgot myself.” He turned and left. The others had rushed to the rail, and were offering suggestions about the recovery of the stones. “You can see them by daylight. Why not leave them there till morning?” was Louise’s surprising suggestion. * “And have them washed off the reef, perhaps? Nonsense!” Bruce snapped. Mr. Jupiter remained seated. He was apparently unruffled by the mishap and called up to the bridge to Hendricks. The captain ordered two men over the side to dive for the necklace and in ten minutes one of them had found it and returned it. But the truce was over. Before long what remained of the party broke up. Bates walked with Mary to her stateroom. “He gave himself away that time,” he growled. “I wish I’d thrown him overboard.” “He’s like a crazy man. Why isn’t he allowed to drink?” Bates did not answer for a minute. "A man who is—not himself—is hardly fair game,” he said. a a a 'T'HREE days passed, as like as peas, except for the heat which grew steadily worse. The glare of the sun on the water was so bright it seared the eyeballs. The heat on deck was frightful, but below stairs it was stiffing. The tempers of all on board the “Gypsy” were strained to snapping point. The boat’s master alone remained tranquil and appeared to be enjoying himself. Every morning, before dawn, he was out in the dinghy, sometimes returning with a catch, sometimes not. Bates stayed behind, smoking interminably, in the shade of the bridge, unobstrusively keeping an eye on things. There was no longer any pretense of association among the others. All were tense, waiting, while overhead, in a corner of the chartroom, the tinkering with the radio apparatus went endlessly on. Mary kept to herself—the monotony was wearing on her, too—but she did not go near Dirk again. The invalid’s ankle was so much improved that he was able to be carried on deck, and there he and an amiable steward played bridge for hours on end. De Loma had gone to his stateroom the night the necklace had taken its unexpected plunge overboard and came out 6nly rarely. Louise was the restless one now. She had developed a savage temper and lashed at all who crossed her path, even Bruce. Deprived of the services of a beauty parlor and still wearing the same gown in which she had come aboard, she began to look less the siren and more the shrew. That night—the night of the fourth day—Mary lay in her bed staring wild-eyed into the darkness. Sleep seemed farther away than the hot stars that hung low and burning bright in a sky that pressed down smotheringly just above her porthole window. tt a a SHE tried to shake it off, but the sense of impending disaster was heavy on her heart. The crowded events of the last few days—Dirk’s fight with De Loma, her anxiety for the necklace, his fiery resentment at being brought aboard the yacht, and then this unforeseen mishap—had been almost too much for her nerves. % 1 It was breathlessly hot.' Mary slipped on a thin black silk coat and stepped out on deck. Through the open portholes of Mr. Jupiter’s stateroom came the sound of his heavy breathing. He, at least, could sleep, and she was thankful for that. (To Be Continued)

Crossword Puzzle and Sticklers on Page 20

TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE

Jason Gridley leaped down the canyon side toward the lone warrior who faced the tremendous creature gliding swiftly through the air. The warrior stood waiting his end. Btft he showed neither fear nor panic. He clutched his puny spear and crude stone knife, determined to die fighting. The distance between Jason and the huge stegosaurus was too great for a revolver shot to take effect, but as the American leaded downward he fired twice in succession*/

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

H&UPLE, IMAGINErxkiP(Aie iu -THg siteet-r : .^- ov/e v—tVlAiO -To “THUMB A HUr \ BeiAio dark* all | > PASS ME UP BECAUSE T M BRAV/U f BRA'Ja ff j tBLE “To SEE ME ***** f -THAT IS Aid IAWEAhTfOAI r |Ai Ml UP FUR 'THE J \ -fiu-f fuejU I UIoULD J s, I Haue .uoem-ted / \ { OIP -thumb . wrm a 1 y* l :rv aup -flasHuc&ht i} * XOMPUS^A/,E *^ r / ujHicH “THE HrrfcH-Hiker/ . .. - A

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS

502J7 TUAT-S THE LAST TIWE 1 LISTED T -Rig \ *Tb OSCAR AN' ALL HIS CCAZY IDEAS— \ j MAKIN' ME 'WAIT IN TU’ RAIN LIKE J !|! f. I "THAT AKI' SET SOAKED TO THE ®I | Ilf! 7 SKllJ.— TOoOSte VMITH OSCAR. tffl 5 H /if i 7 is that ues always j{ ■ | I \ M BoA66itJ4> ABOUT HIIAS&LP T M ip f ■ h Ajv,

WASHINGTON TUBBS II

SALESMAN SAM

4 , come Tpi Thimk of iT, neßß6 i A (vino Told Tip* Vou jso Th' BATn.es f 7 That kid 3UsT kmockedA la/AIPM walked away pro a PRETTY COUL-O SCRAP? y say, Youajg. fella, YOU'RE S, TH' sTuffim’ OUT of good scrap— why miss rr? PReTrv oood with Yer. fAM Tried 1 —^ —/—'Z/ \\ ( HiTTs! WHO Tauoht YaTo 7^ , ' —. '' " ' -■— —.- ~ ■‘''-jrtiJ*'

BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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The American thought he could divert the attention of the beast from its prey. Perhaps even frighten it away by the unaccustomed sound of the shots. And he guessed right. One lucky shot struck the creature, which now veered from its course, emitting a loud screaming sound. It had spied Jason and' evidently attributing its hurt to this new enemy, this thing, using its tail as a rudder and tilting its spine plates up on one side, turned in CJHdley’s direction.

—By Ahem

MJELL- WOW DID OSCARS W TT”*-*,, -IwCidea work out? voo -- <— LOOK AS IP TUINSS J/ A PA,sJ "“ TCOOBI - e V DIDN'T 60 SO 6000, j ( v>jrTW THAT J __ freckles U ( W£ TALKS Too much < ABMT^II.S6,F

0 INI, by Edgar Rica Burroughs, lac. All rights gum 4

As the two shots shattered the silence of the canyon the warn or saw the man leaping down the declivity toward him. Then he noticed the beast had turned toward the newcomer. The man could scarcely believe a stranger was deliberately risking his life to aid him. Yet there seemed no other explanation. And so, the perplexed warrior, instead of seeking safety in flight, ran swiftly toward Jason to join forces with him in combating the attack of the terrible enemy. ti*s

OUT OUR WAY

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—By Edgar Rice Burroughs

With wide distended jaws and uttering piercing shrieks, the stegosaurus shot Uward the American. But n.rw it presented an easy target. Jason fired rapidly with both weapons, aiming at its open mouth and thus hoping to reach the creature’s brain. The strange sounds, together with the pain and shock of the bullets, proved too much for the beast. A dozen feet from Gridley, it swerved upward, and pcssed over his head, meantime receiving three more bullets in its belly.

PAGE 27

—By Williams

—By Blosser

—By Crane

—By Small

—By Martin